Dreams (May Not) Come True
by honeybadgerhook
Summary: Season 3B insert. Still trying to banish Emma's magic through Killian's kiss, Zelena realizes the surest way to get them together is to try to keep them far, far apart. (Angst ahoy!)
1. You Are (Never) Alone

The cruiser's engine roared with Emma's rage as she took the corner too hard. Granny's veered into view farther down the street and she saw Zelena outside with Hook by the throat. Blood trickled down his neck from the press of her nails. Emma hit the gas—but with a glance over her shoulder and a smirk of ruby red lips, the witch disappeared into emerald smoke, tossing the mass of dark leather and sass into the cruiser's path.

Emma slammed the brakes and swerved. The screech of the wheels covered a choice string of expletives. David bolted out of the diner, shouting, even before she slid to a complete stop. While she climbed out and called for paramedics, he shirked off his button down. Blood trickled down Hook's neck from the press of Zelena's nails and David knelt to tend to Hook's wounds. However, when David pressed soft flannel to Hook's skin, the captain growled and drove his hook at the prince's eye.

"Hook!?" Emma shouted, and a flick of her wrist sent the silvery sharpness clattering down the street. David caught the disarmed stump and forced Hook's shoulders to the pavement, but the pirate's head snapped in her direction. He sprawled on the street as he had lain another night, drenched in blood and vengeance. She stopped short at his glare through sweat soaked strands—not brilliant blue, but burning red-like a troubled dawn and a winged beast on a New York rooftop and _never, never for the Savior_.

-0-

The seizures started in the ER with a few jerky motions that sent every machine screaming. At the first convulsion, Emma backed away, deferring to the medics, but the second came so hard and so violent, Emma shouldered in to block his swinging stump from knocking a nurse senseless. At her touch, Hook dropped all resistance. His writhing ebbed, his breaths growing even and shallow. She tried to let go, but whenever she withdrew, his heart raced and his muscles tensed and his red eyes roamed in madness; so she stayed at his side, rubbing his knuckles through fits and whimpers and moans.

-0-

Mary Margaret's reassuring tones flitted somewhere at the edge of Emma's hearing, Whale chimed in agreement, but Emma's attention strayed down the dim hall of the psych ward—the sturdiest rooms they could find—when Regina's dark eyes appeared at the slat of Hook's cell, motioning her inside.

She heaved open the door and her eyes fell on the limp form slumped on the bed. For the moment, he slept, oblivious to Regina, who eased open one of his lids to examine his red, darting eye.

"You can relax, He's not going monkey."

Emma stepped forward. "Thank you, Regina—"

"I said he wasn't going monkey, I didn't say he's fine." Regina straightened, tugging her suit jacket smooth. "This is Oz magic, a bit outside my understanding. To break it, I need to know exactly what I'm fighting."

"I'll call Belle," Emma began, but a grunt from Hook cut her off. He started to whimper and writhe. Emma sat down on the edge of the cot and placed a hand over his knee until he quieted.

"Responds to light magic," Regina noted, "promising."

-0-

After the all-clear from Regina, Whale had Hook moved to an observation room. Half a day after peeling Hook off the street, Emma found herself curled up in a chair next to his bed, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She mumbled groggy goodbyes as her parents kissed her goodnight and withdrew from the room.

She was just drifting off when Hook called out unintelligibly and started to shake. His lids parted and red discs darted about the room. Emma stood and pulled his hand to hers.

"Hook," she soothed. "Hook come on, settle down."

The heart monitor beside him only beeped faster.

"Killian—"

She pressed both hands to his face and, for a brief moment, his crimson eyes locked on hers. He slackened, his mutterings faded to soft groans, and his lids slowly drooped shut.

Relieved, but dead tired, Emma swayed with exhaustion. She glanced out a glass panel to the team keeping watch—Tink, who had her back to the window, and Regina, who frowned into her vending machine coffee. Deciding she was too beat to care, Emma swung a leg over the side of the bed and climbed in.

"Wake up now and I'll kill you myself," she huffed, and laid her head on his chest, one hand clasped on his face, brushing along his cheekbone to the beat of his calming heart.

-0-

Emma woke up pleasantly warm and tried to bury deeper into her pillow when a nose full of musk and man reminded her exactly who her pillow was. She bolted upright, eyes darting to the glass, relieved to find the curtain drawn closed over the panel.

No witnesses.

As the adrenaline ebbed, she peered down at Killian's face. She hadn't been this close to him since she kissed him in Neverland. The proximity brought back the rush of that moment: the challenge in his eyes, the confidence in his grin and that fluid sense of control. Now exhaustion etched across his stone still face, a furrow between his knit brows, even as he slept. Truthfully, she'd noticed that mark of concern long before the witch attacked, nestled among his darkened countenance and cold glances and _perhaps another time._

Emma Swan knew a wall when she saw one.

Perhaps the pirate captain had at last grown tired of _courting danger_, grown tired of her. The thought cut surprisingly deep, so she shoved it away. She was not about to lay here and creep on _Captain Hook_ because he got a little broody around broom-wielding sociopaths.

With a huff, she swung a leg back over the edge of the bed and hopped out.

To find said sociopath primly posed on the edge of a dated plastic chair, black hat and all.

"Oh, don't get up on my account," cooed Zelena.

Adrenaline kicked in and Emma moved herself between the witch and the pirate. "What did you do to him?"

"It's just a little curse," she replied innocently, "that manifests his darkest dreams before his very eyes until his brave little heart literally bursts. He's been the stuff of nightmares for centuries, one can only imagine what's going on in there."

_Truth_, her senses screamed. Emma's glare sharpened. "Why Hook?"

"Delayed justice. He tried to kill my mother."

_Lie_, her senses screamed.

"Oh, did you like this one, too?" the witch faked a horrified expression. "I'd hate to make you a black widow yet again."

_Lie._

"Bit of advice between us girls," Zelena said as she stood, her gaze dropping to Hook. "Kiss him goodbye now, while there's still fight left in him."

With a puff, she disappeared

-0-

One phone call and two hours later, Belle and Regina shoved a book at Emma in a language she couldn't read, but the pictures, with fiery red eyes and gaunt cheeks, told more than she'd wanted to see of Hook's fate.

Grim fairy tales indeed.

"Nightmare curse," Belle explained. "Kills with terror and despair born out of one's deepest fears."

"His own personal hell," replied Emma.

"She's trying to trigger a heart attack," Regina translated, flipping through another tome. "Zelena did her research, too. There's a cure, but not for Hook."

"What does that mean?"

Belle shifted nervously in her sky high heels. Doing this much for the man who shot her couldn't be easy. "A mother's kiss breaks the curse—or any biological parent, I suppose. But either way—"

"Best as we know," Emma finished, "the cures have been dead for centuries."

"All three of them," added Regina.

Emma turned her face back to the sleeping man to hide the heat building in her eyes at the reminder that Hook had also outlived his best chance at True Love's Kiss.

Damn that blue-eyed witch.

-0-

The next time Hook seized, it wasn't Emma's hands but Whale's defib paddles that kept him this side of the unknown and she wondered this wasn't Zelena's attempt to teach the "savior" her own uselessness.

It was like Zelena heard her thoughts because the witch appeared in the quiet room, grinning ear to ear, with the most obnoxious bag of popcorn she could find.

"Annoying, isn't it?" Zelena giggled and popped a kernel in her mouth. "Knowing the cures to his problem are locked away by the laws of time—"

Pop, another kernel.

"—If only you could reach back for just a moment—"

Pop.

"—but, alas—"

Hook grunted and trembled in his sleep and Zelena wiggled her eyebrows with excitement.

"—Won't be long now."

And then she was gone again.

Emma didn't have time to deal with the witch's taunts because Zelena _was_ right. Hook was building up to another episode and whatever needed doing needed doing now, before the room filled with people and Emma lost her last few moments alone with Hook ever. All she _could_ think about in that moment was Zelena's advice, to kiss him. Not a kiss goodbye, though, she wouldn't give either of them the satisfaction, but she did remember the fire their kiss lit in his eyes and she needed _that_ part of him to kick in. Her kiss, if he was to be believed, had saved him once—brought him back from the edge. A small part of her, that small fleck of resilient hope she blamed on her mother, wondered if her kiss _could_ bring him back again, but though she might be the daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming, she was also a product of the real world. While she felt a lot of things when she looked at Hook, she'd also felt true love's kiss with Henry and, in comparison to the rock solid surety she felt for her son, any attraction to Hook paled in comparison, leaving her with only the certainty of her own doubt.

Hook jerked and the monitor screamed and Emma ran out of time. It wasn't her best shot, but it was her only shot.

He was drenched in cold sweat and she had to wipe strands of his dark hair out of his eyes before she leaned over and—

He jolted and his eyes flew open—bright blue, and oh-so-clouded with confusion.

"Killian?" She asked, and blinked back her own surprise because, while he was certainly awake and she was certainly relieved, she also certainly _did not kiss him._

"Swan?" he croaked, blinked—and pulled away. The movement was almost imperceptible—she was still bent over him and he had nowhere to go, really—but it was there and it was not the reaction she had expected. She called for Regina, reminding herself he was _dying_ three seconds ago so he's allowed to be a little out of sorts. It was still enough room for her doubt to fester, however, so she clamped down on the sore spot at the back of her eyes and focused on how much she loved her son.


	2. Dreams May Not Come True

**Dreams (May Not) Come True, K+**

Zelena clutched his throat, holding him aloft—blatantly, in the open street—though her hissed words reached only his ears.

"_Kiss her, Captain, or I send you someplace no ship, no bean can bring you back from."_

Killian ranked that high on his list of "Never going to happen", right up there with shaving and raiding David's wardrobe. (Mary Margaret's showed a stronger grasp of color theory and couldn't be so readily dismissed.)

"Have it your way, then."

Nails pierced his neck and Killian braced for crush of his windpipe, but at the sound of squealing tires, the witch dropped him, dissolving in a swirl of green smoke. Killian hit pavement, fighting to suck air into burning lungs. Emma's cruiser slid to a stop beside him, but a strange, scruffy man climbed out, Sherrif's badge pinned to his chest, shouting his name as Killian slumped into darkness.

-0-

He came to in the Charming loft, stretched out across a couch, bruised but breathing. He found the lip-biting looks from a pregnant Mary Margaret and the gun-thumbing posturing from an indignant David far less disturbing than the inexplicable presence of one Sherriff Graham. When Killian asked for Emma in strained, half-coughed syllables, David's soft eyes betrayed stern shoulders and Mary Margaret wrapped him in a hug that grew cold as he noticed sprays of white lilies scattered about the apartment, the table covered in cards scrawled with calligraphy and sympathy.

-0-

Gentle but insistent hands tugged him back toward the truck. He followed numbly, but his eyes lingered on the snow swept tombstone inscribed with "Emma" and "daughter" and "mother" and that impossible word: "wife".

Regina prattled on, speculating about Oz magic and parallel realms—Henry called them alternate universes—but all he knew was that his own name, scrawled on the adjacent stone above a fresh grave, should have read "traitor" and "murderer", not "husband". He had opened her coffin with the brush of his lips and cut her down with the weakness of his own desire.

A monkey screeched in the distance, doubling Charming's efforts to stuff him inside the cab, but Killian felt every inch the beast.

-0-

They tried to keep it from him, but deception never was the Charming family strong suit—though snooping was _his_ second nature.

Toys far too young for Henry. Baby clothes far too big for the unborn royal. Diapers hastily stashed in closet trunks.

But most damning of all, the child himself appeared—poof and all—smack dab in the middle of the Sunday morning loft, just as David poured pancakes.

Regina, panicked, poofed in barely a heartbeat later, but time enough for tiny arms to lock firmly around Killian's boot. He had _her_ nose and Mary Margaret's chin and his brother's eyes—and Killian's heart, from that very moment.

"Daddy," asked a voice shaking with that childish brand of far-reaching hope. "Did you bring Mommy back with you?"

Mary Margaret buried her face into David's chest. Regina's lips twitched against the truth. Words failed even Killian, but words weren't meant for times like these. Kilian pulled him into his arms, rubbing gentle fingers through soft curls in the kind of embrace he hadn't known in centuries. No, not words, only a father's shoulder.

Burned pancakes sat forgotten on a cold stove before the boy stopped sobbing.

-0-

"You have to go, Hook. Now."

Waving a hand, Regina flung him, sprawling, into Gold's shop, the rattle of the bell drowned in the screeches of a half-dozen monkeys as the door slammed shut with a fizzle of magic.

"Come on."

David pulled him to his feet (the boy—Liam—slung on his back like a backpack), half-dragging him to the back room where Belle pulled a tarp from a standing mirror.

"It sends things where they belong," she explained. "Watch."

She took a bracelet off her arm and held it before the mirror. It flashed and displayed a large armoire in what he assumed was Belle's bedroom. The drawer opened, Belle tossed the bracelet through, landing in the drawer.

"You try."

Killian stepped forward and Belle backed away until only the pirate stood in frame. Immediately Emma's form replaced Killian's reflection. She crouched over the mirror, as if it lay on the ground, and mouthed his name.

Squealing, Liam wriggled off David's back and ran toward the glass, but as he neared it, the magic shut off, leaving only the reflection of Killian and the boy. David snatched the boy back out of frame and Emma's image returned, unveiling to Killian brutal truth: Killian belonged there, with her—Liam did not.

Killian looked back at the boy, red-faced and soaked with tears and screaming for this father. Screaming for him. The magic might mark a difference, but Liam didn't.

"Hook," David broke in, "you have to go or you're a dead man."

Nodding, Killian pressed against the mirror, but the glass held firm.

"It doesn't work for hearts divided, Dearie."

Rumplestiltskin staggered from the front room, struggling against himself as he held a hand toward the gathered few.

A billow of smoke and a flash of green and the Witch was there, too, holding the dagger. "Aren't you a lucky one, Rumple. You can crush the pirate's heart all over again."

Liam puffed out of David's arms, appearing again at Killian's leg, tears dried and tiny body standing between him and the witch. The cold thought crossed Killian's mind that maybe a scene just like this had played out in front of the boy before.

"This time, _both_ of their hearts," Zelena added.

She rammed the pommel of the dagger into the mirror, sending shards flying in a burst of escaping magic. Killian knelt, swinging his coat over the boy as shattered bits bounced off aged leather. The boy trembled in his arms and Killian drew him close, nuzzling his nose into dark curls.

Rumplestiltskin was wrong—his heart was not divided, but torn in two; the part that sought Emma across sealed realms and the part that couldn't leave this boy fatherless.

He felt the crocodile's hand on his shoulder. The boy's breath hitched, but he didn't whimper. (Strong, like his mother.) Killian leaned his head down to touch gentle lips to Liam's forehead.

Light filled his vision, warmth shot through him, and the witch screamed as if the very skin burned from her bones.

-0-

Killian woke to Emma's eyes and the veil of her hair tumbling around him, warm thumbs rubbing reassurance along his cheekbones. He drifted in a daze. Was this real, or some vision he'd conjured to endure the witch's tormented world?

"Killian?" she whispered, surprised eyes blinking damp rims dry.

"Swan?" he rasped, his voice weak and raw.

She called out the door, the rattle of her shout more than enough to convince him he was, indeed, awake.

He lay in a hospital bed, one of those blasted monitor machines chirping in his ear and feeling so numb from stem to stern that he could barely shift a limb.

"You were cursed," she explained without him having to ask.

"Nightmare curse," said Regina, striding into the room, nursing a coffee cup. "Much like the sleeping curse, except fatal. Torturing the mind until the heart finally fails.

The whole tragic world unraveled in his mind, the impossibilities of its construct, so believable at the time faded as their absurdity came to light—that alternate worlds might actually exist, that Emma might actually…

"Broken by true love's kiss," she said tossing the now empty coffee cup into a trash bin with a distinct smack of annoyance, "which took long enough."

The machine chirped faster.

"Swan, you didn't."

Red rose from her collar to her cheeks and she avoided his eyes for Regina's.

"You think I kissed him?"

"You think I actually wanted three cups of vending machine coffee?" the queen spat back. "I was giving you," she waved her hands as if they completed the sentence, "_space_."

He let his eyes sink closed, seeing now the witch's plot—to lure the savior's lips into his tainted kiss.

"No one kissed anyone," Emma shot back.

"Then how do you explain-"

"It wasn't her," Killian breathed. He pursed his own lips, still tasting the sweat and the tears of a figment of his imagination—no, a fragment of his hopes—a blue-eyed dream, nestled among the nightmares, calling him by names undeserved. Hope, with small hands and unsteady limbs, awakening a love that loved beyond question, beyond time. "It was Liam."

Exhaustion tugged him back toward darkness. Emma patted gentle hands to his face to rouse him from perceived delirium, but she could hold only his body. Something like his soul retreated, grieving in the absence of the child who wasn't yet, who may not be, but who he loved already and with all his heart.


End file.
